Marcus Brown’s “Fear and race in America” (Daily Iowan, Dec. 1) attempts to dissect and analyze the senseless deaths epidemic that is directly connected with race.
My first answer is that the answers lie in American history and literature beginning with Herman Melville’s Bonito Cerano: “Captain what troubles you? The Negro.” Then in Moby Dick, remember Moby Dick was not all white — it was like race, an illusion.
Then in Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark — in which she explicates the true reason that the Pilgrims left Europe — not toward personal freedom but away from it. Thus attacking what Kevin Phillips in 1776 calls “Fictionalization of America’s history.” And finally to James Baldwin’s “Price of the Ticket” and “Notes of a Native Son” — in which he heals your wound and self-doubt — answer your final question: “Is it my responsibility to alleviate [white] fears when I’m scared myself?”
America was founded on laissez-faire capitalism and as such needs slave labor; but it also was founded as a religious refuge mostly by Protestant Christians — that in the 16th century had to change the wording of the Bible from “you servants” to “you slave obey your masters.” All done in the name of the progress. Slavery ended in the U.S., but laissez-faire capitalism continues. Twentith-century American writers such as Lothrop Stoddard and Maddison Grant, in The Rising Tide of Color and The Passing of the Great Race wrote classic texts, which influenced such despots as Hitler about the inferiority of blacks and Jews as inferior races. These types of text were published in America until the mid-20th century, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
The 1950s creation of the suburbs reinforced de jure segregation created with Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which kept blacks and whites from integrating. Brown vs the Board (1954) ended Plessy. The capitalists who created the suburbs were afraid of losing profits, so they created the fear that the Black Boogie Man who rapes and robs would move in to the neighborhoods. For white children raised with this fear, it became the norm. And children raised in the ghettos created by white flight began unconsciously to accept labeling placed on them from the laissez-faire capitalists — and their behavior began to reflect this fear and loathing.
J. Edgar Hoover lent a very heavy hand in creating the fear of black men by using falsified crime statics so that he and his FBI would appear to be keeping “law and order” while increasing their own federal budget. Thus fear of black men spread from the top law-enforcement agency to the precincts, to the local cop on the beat. Presidents such as George H.W. Bush ran for office on this fear of the “Black Beast” — in movies D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation helped reinforce racial fear and was endorsed by President Woodrow Wilson. Thereby, “society is more afraid of what [you] might do than they are of what actual murders have done …”
Fear is reinforced in the media whereby society is controlled and de facto segregation is maintained as a force of laissez-faire capitalists who know that black and white unity will end their exploitation of the masses. Their real creation: Actual murders do “make sense” because they protect their profit and police the public square while using/creating scapegoats. These capitalists hire politicians that make sure that monies for mental-health treatment never materializes — that white men who discriminately/indiscriminately murder are seen as anomalies in the public square and the fictional “Black Brute” is a constant. And remember, we’re no angels either: black on black crime is still prevalent.
Baldwin states in Native Son: It does no good to hate white people. They are too powerful and innocent for that …” — Behave yourself. Therefore, Brother Brown, keep your head down; pray, study American history and literature, which includes African American history and literature; thereby you will understand that race is a fiction created by laissez-faire capitalists to keep us all in line.
Mary Gravitt
